A Day in the Life of a Demon
by roisaber
Summary: Marla gets her First Class licensed revoked due to a certain unprintable incident, so she's assigned Third Class grunt work until she can convince Hild to restore it. The Great Demon World Leader isn't easy to please and she doesn't hesitate to stick Marla with one embarrassing task after another.


"BZZ BZZ BZZ BZZ BZZ BZZ!"

Marla awoke, swore, and annihilated her alarm clock with burst of fire from her palms. This was her daily routine, and to be honest, it was costing her a small fortune in electronics. Groaning inwardly, she threw herself out of bed and balanced unsteadily on tired feet. Every day had been exactly the same since she'd had her First Class license suspended.

She lived in a tiny urban studio in the Shinjuku district, and she shared a bathroom with her nextdoor suitemate. She had to wait for the other woman to vacate the room. The first thing she did was guzzle lukewarm water straight from the tap. She drank a mixture of frothy water and air until her stomach could take no more, and let out a belch that echoed off the walls of her poorly furnished apartment. She spent a few more minutes trying to brush the hangover out of her teeth, peeing, and unsteadily putting in her contacts. Sometimes being a demon wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

She rifled through her clothes rack and quickly dressed in her military uniform. Marla hid herself behind a small Japanese screen, but she needn't have bothered. Nobody could see into her tiny fourth floor apartment from street level, and they were unlikely to give a damn even if they did. After a few quick brushstrokes through her unmanageable blonde hair Marla considered herself ready for the day. She grabbed her Samsung tablet and thumbed through the jobs her superiors had scheduled for her.

835h: Disrupt Sensei Uzuki's scantron grading

1112h: Take Tanaka Akira's virginity, by force if necessary

1129h: Knock over Arakaki Hisayo's stack of papers

1136h: Talk Yamatsu Kaoru into suicide

1200h-1300h: LEGALLY MANDATED LUNCH BREAK

1401h: Break the fuel pump aboard FV Inabakumaru

1402h: Break the oil pump aboard FV Inabakumaru

1408h: Break the VHF radio aboard FV Inabakumaru

1502h: Call in a fake bomb threat to the University of Tokyo

1539h: Expose yourself to a group of middle schoolers

1500h: Commit a felony

1546h: Submit a report

Marla sighed; it looked like she had a full day of work ahead of her. After repeated failures to break up Keiichi and Belldandy, and another incident that didn't bear mentioning, Marla had been temporarily demoted to Demon, Third Class, which meant that she was stuck with a series of odd jobs meant to stymie the will of the God in the human world. Getting her First Class license back was going to be a repetitive grind of menial tasks until the perpetually unpleasable Hild was satisfied that she'd earned it.

Her first mission seemed easy enough, and she jumped out of her fourth story window to land in the small courtyard below. A few people stopped and stared, but quickly looked away. In Marla's experience, the human brain had a remarkable capacity for editing out the simply unbelievable, and within ten minutes everyone who'd seen her jump out of the window would talk themselves out of what they observed. The human capacity for reason could be their greatest curse as well as their greatest blessing. Snickering, Marla exited the grounds of her apartment building and went to the street where she'd parked her decrepit 1984 Honda Civic. She let out a sudden bark of rage. There was a bright pink envelope affixed to the car's cracked windshield.

"Fuck!" she howled with rage.

A few nearby salarymen stared.

It was only 0814, but nevertheless, there was already a ticket on her car. Parking enforcement hours didn't start until 0800, making her only 14 minutes late. She read the ticket with growing incredulity. Sure enough, she now owed the municipality of Shinjuku 350 yen.

"Double fuck!"

A few grade schoolers plugged their ears and hurried past, but Marla paid them no mind.

Marla stuffed the ticket into the breast pocket of her black military uniform and opened the car door. She never locked the pitiful machine, and in all the years she'd left it unsecured on the streets of Shinjuku, no one had ever tried to steal it. She turned her key in the ignition and the engine rumbled, coughed, and refused to turn over. She tried the procedure again. It was to no avail.

"Triple fuck!"

Nothing she tried was enough to coax the engine to life, and the scent of unburned petrol filled the passenger cabin as she flooded the engine with her attempts. With a final, unprintable curse, Marla jumped out of the stricken vehicle and looked at the time. It was 0832. With her car non-functional, she was going to have to conspicuously _fly_ everywhere that day. With no time to spare, the red-eyed demon jumped into the sky, and immediately started heading for the University of Tokyo at top speed. Her skirt, which didn't quite reached her knees, fluttered behind her. There weren't any aircraft in her immediate vicinity, but if there were, they would have gotten quite a show. Soon, she slowed to a halt and alighted on top of the roof of the Department of Literature Building 3. As usual, no one paid her any attention; they couldn't believe what they'd just seen so they didn't.

College campuses are the perfect disguise for a demon. Her military-style uniform would have marked Marla out as extremely odd in any other context, but universities are breeding grounds for idiosyncrasy and eccentricity. She made it to Professor Uzuki's office without any trouble, but unfortunately, a quick peek through the window showed that the man was busy at his desk. She would have to think fast. Keeping a careful eye on the busy corridors around her, she waited until no one appeared to be looking her way. With a snap of her fingers, she threw a small ball of smoky fire at a smoke detector on the ceiling. A klaxon sounded immediately.

With a collective, audible groan, students filed out of their classrooms and out of the building. Marla hid in the bathroom until the coast was clear, and then snuck into Uzuki's empty office. She shuffled through his files until she found the scantron's grading key, and reprogrammed the machine to accept slightly different answers. Not enough that it would seem suspicious, but just enough so that most students would get a grade ten percent lower than they deserved. With a satisfied cackle of delight, Marla checked off the first mission from her day planner as a success.

The second mission on her agenda was a little more complicated. She used her phone to query Tanaka Akira's location from the demonic database that governed their mission planning, and gave a quick read to the psychological profile they had at their disposal. She found the information entirely unsurprising. The boy was 19 years old and the son of an extremely ascetic Shinto priest. The sexual missions always embarrassed Marla deeply, but her training warned her of the dire consequences of failing to corrupt the youth. Sex would be reduced to a mechanical act limited to the marriage bed between two heterosexual partners, in the dark, in the missionary position, and done only for the purposes of procreation. Pleasure would be made illegal. As humiliating as it was to give herself over to total strangers – and to lesser _humans_ to boot – it was all for the greater evil. Besides, hadn't the legendary demon princess Naomi Campbell done the same?

In a small Shinto temple nestled in the outskirts of the forest surrounding Tokyo, Tanaka Akira sweated, and prayed.

"Oh Buddha," he mumbled aloud in his room. "I beg you; deliver me from this terrible suffering!"

Akira's father was out of town on a visit to the head of the Kongobu-ji shrine, leaving the boy alone with his temptation. His home life had not been easy. His father took the ascetic vows and repented from his sinful lifestyle when Akira was only five years old, and Akira's mother immediately abandoned the family, and left the hapless boy behind while she pursued a second youth in the city. Akira's father forbade him from going to school or having normal friends, and commanded the boy to study the Sutras for ten hours a day. Akira could recite many by rote, and he secretly hated them, though he could never admit it to himself. Naturally, it was destined that he would take over the shrine when his father finally passed away. The demons had other plans.

Akira whimpered, and tried to move into a more comfortable position. The massive, bulging erection scraped against his robes and was scratchy against the foreskin of his penis no matter how he tried to reposition himself. The torment was nearly unbearable.

"Oh Buddha, I would do _absolutely anything_ if you'd only give me a sign," Akira moaned.

Marla took the bus to the edge of Tokyo, and then flew the rest of the way to the shrine. It was embarrassing to have to dodge low-flying aircraft, and the skies of Tokyo were a hazardous place, even for the most attentive of demons. When she finally arrived at the shrine, she gave herself a quick once-over using her phone's mirror function. Her blonde hair was feathery and a little unkempt. Little ringlets hung down over her back and breasts.

"Perfect," she said to herself with a grin.

Marla boldly marched to the shrine's entrance and knocked on the door.

"Hello?" she called out. "Sensei? I'm in need of … spiritual guidance."

The sound of a woman's voice broke Akira's reverie. It didn't have the soft, dulcimer tones he normally associated with the female of the species; it scratched against his soul almost as much as the fabric of his robes scratched his most sensitive region. Still, it was his job to care for the faithful while his father was away, and he desperately tried to will his erection back down as he made his way to the bamboo door of the shrine.

"Hello?" Marla called out again.

Akira's heart thundered in his chest when he saw the demon. He hadn't inherited the second sight of his ancestors, and to him, she appeared to be just another woman, albeit a foreigner in rather odd clothes. She was beautiful. He hoped his bulge wasn't clearly visible.

"Um, hello, my name is Tanaka Akira, and I'm keeping this shrine for my father," he stuttered.

Marla laughed lightly. "Are you going to invite me in?"

Akira nodded vigorously, and then blushed.

The two went into the shrine and Akira brought out some green tea. Marla nodded appreciatively after the first sip, and then got to business.

"I have a… problem," Marla admitted. "I just can't stop myself from having sex with everyone I meet!"

Akira spat out a mouthful of warm tea. "What!?"

"It's so embarrassing; I just can't say no. High schoolers, old men, stockbrokers, truck drivers, policemen; anyone and everyone. Even other women! If a construction worker whistles at me, I give him my number. I just can't resist temptation."

Akira's ears burned. He had no idea what to say to her.

Marla made her most bedroom eyes. "I'm such a bad Buddhist."

"N-no, of course not!" Akira helplessly protested. "Such a… um… material attachment is bound to cause you to accumulate negative karma. But if you just chant the name of Amitabha Buddha, He will help you escape the trap of earthly temptations."

Marla gazed deeply into Akira's eyes.

"Has it worked for you?" she asked.

Everything in Akira's training told him that lying was immoral; everything in Akira's training told him he couldn't tell the truth.

"No," he finally admitted.

"So what do I do?" Marla asked plaintively.

Akira's mind was racing a kilometer a second. His eyes wandered of their own accord to her breasts, which were rising and falling in time with her gentle breaths. The woman was wearing a knee high pleated skirt, but she sat in such a way as to expose most of her pale, shapely inner thighs. He traced them up to where her most forbidden place should be, but the skirt hung in just such a way as to prevent his wandering eyes from reaching the prize they desperately sought. He looked back into her eyes, and was humiliated to discover that she'd seen his gaze wander. Marla disarmed him with a giggle.

Akira tried to break the tension with a joke. "What if a Shinto priest asked you?"

Marla shrugged coyly.

"I wouldn't say no."

Akira's penis felt like it was going to burst through the front of his robes. Not even in control of his body anymore, he leaned across the table and pressed himself against her breasts. Marla let out a shy gasp, and then mashed her mouth against his. In no time at all, she disrobed in a flurry of clothes and silky underthings, until she was standing naked before him. His eyes explored every nook and crevasse of her body, and he finally gave himself over to his lust and drew his penis through the folds of his robes. It was already wet with his own sweat and precum. Marla lay across a chair and spread her legs, inviting the tool into her waiting shaft. It was all over in a few seconds. Overcome with unspeakable and unexpected rapture, Akira thrust into her a few times before grunting a massive load of pent-up frustration into her willing hole. He blacked out for a few seconds.

When he returned to his senses, he saw that Marla was already getting dressed.

"Wait, where are you going!?" the youth gasped.

"Sorry, kiddo." Marla ticked off another box on her agenda. "I've got more work to do, and I'm already running late."

"But… won't you at least give me your number?"

Marla shrugged. "I don't mix business with pleasure. I'll tell you what, though. You're a cute young man, and you're polite and eager. If you give up all this Buddha stuff, I'm sure you'll have to beat girls off with a stick. Go to University; study Japanese folklore or something. Girls will throw themselves on your cock."

Akira blushed furiously at the woman's earthy language.

"One way or another, you'll never amount to anything stuck in this stupid shrine your whole life. Anyway, see ya." Marla let her flippant demenour fall for a moment. "It was short, but sweet."

She kissed him lightly on the forehead, and then left the shrine. Akira gaped after her before running to the door, hoping to catch her before she made it back to her car.

But Marla was gone as if she'd vanished into thin air.

"I didn't even get your name…" Akira whispered.

Her third mission of the day turned out to be at the TokyoMetropolitanHibiyaHigh School, a premiere educational facility for social climbers. The mission briefing stated that Arakaki Misayo was carrying a 60 page essay that would serve as her qualifying thesis for entry into the University of Tokyo, but tragically, the girl hadn't thought to number the pages. It was due at 1200 hours. Marla checked the time; 1127. She had just enough time to fly at top speed to the school, disregarding the danger of being seen from the land or sky. After all, who's going to report seeing a flying woman to the authorities? That was a one-way ticket into Japan's mental health curriculum. She landed just in time to see the pretty, black haired girl carrying the huge stack of papers to her father's waiting car.

Marla wasted no time. She bought a coffee from a nearby vending machine, and used her demonic intuition to determine just the right moment. She had a sudden flash of insight and she deftly flicked the can, which skittered along the sidewalk. Her trajectory was perfect. Just as Misayo was lifting her right foot off the ground, measuring each step carefully to keep her from faceplanting due to her elegant heels, the can smacked into the back of her foot and knocked her to the ground. There was a sudden burst of motion that looked like a flock of seagulls taking flight as she accidentally threw the thesis everywhere, trying to keep herself from meeting the pavement face-first. Marla couldn't repress a giggle. Arakaki Misayo wouldn't be able to print up a new copy of the thesis and get it in before the drop-dead deadline now. The girl slumped down to the ground and started sobbing.

The last mission before her legally mandated lunch break was to talk Yamastu Kaoru into suicide. The boy had a weak, sentimental worldview, and was constantly on the verge of being bullied into an early grave. It was Marla's job to ensure the bullies won. If anyone ever actually read his poetry, he would undoubtedly grow into a great star of Japanese culture and brighten the lives of millions. Demonkind couldn't allow that to happen. Marla suddenly blushed as she felt a blob of spent cum drip out of her lips and settle into her pink cotton panties. She thought she'd cleaned herself completely, but that boy was some kind of prodigy in the quantity department. She gritted her teeth and resolved to ignore the wet spot that lost her attention for just as long as was needed to regain it.

Time was ticking down, and if she was late to taking lunch, Marla would be scolded by her superiors. She flew to the location of her next target, which was flashing on the GPS of her Galaxy phone. Demons had a custom ROM that added functionality to the native OS that would make any human physicist's eyes bug out of his head. Marla landed on the roof of a local high school and looked around for the soft, feminine young man. Ever the dramatist, Kaoru was sitting alone, composing his own eulogy.

"And so like a leaf on the wind

I find myself borne away…" Kaoru said aloud, tasting the syllables with his tongue.

"Hey, you," Marla called out. "Your poetry sucks."

But this was the wrong tack to take. Kaoru immediately became defensive.

"What would you know about it?" he demanded. "Do you even _go_ here?"

Marla blinked. She wasn't expecting the kid to show any spine.

"I'm…" she searched for a good lie. "I'm a recruiter for OsakaUniversity, literature department. And my _professional opinion_ is that your poetry sucks."

"How would you make it any better, then?" Kaoru challenged.

Marla hesitated, and then started composing extemporaneously.

"Um… how about… Life is ugly and so am I / I'd be better off dead under a brown sky."

Poetry was not Marla's forté, and Kaoru snorted.

"Wait, I can do better!" Marla protested. "I'm shit, my family is shit, and life is shit / With myself a brick I'd like to hit."

"That is the worst fucking poem I've ever heard," Kaoru said with complete honesty. "It doesn't follow any of the fundamental features of Japanese poetry! Poetry is supposed to be a reflection of the natural world in a quiet heart, not a ham-fisted attempt to rhyme disconnected syllables. Of course, I wouldn't expect a blonde haired, browned eyed foreigner to understand the nuances of Japanese composition!"

"H-hey!" Marla protested.

"You know what? I came up here to kill myself today. But if somebody as dumb as _you_ can get on the faculty of the University of Osaka, I think maybe I _do_ have a chance in life after all!"

Marla was concerned. If she botched a job as simple as this, she'd never get her license back.

"Isn't all life suffering?" Marla countered. "Aren't we victims of birth, sickness, old age, and death?"

"Maybe so, but that just gives us fuel for self-expression!"

Marla surreptitiously checked the time on her phone. It was already 1157, and she had less than three minutes to finish the job and clock out for lunch or she'd catch holy Heaven from her superiors. She blanched.

"You're killing yourself and that's final!" Marla cried.

Before the shocked boy could react, Marla grabbed him and carried his struggling body to the side of the building.

"Hey, wait!" Kaoru shouted.

Marla hefted him over the side, where his body plummeted five stories before smashing into the concrete below with a wet thunk. It wasn't exactly according to regulations, but the coroner turn up any signs of a struggle, and the half-composed suicide note still sat in his notebook on a nearby table. It would be legally ruled a suicide despite her bending of the rules, and Marla was sure that was admissible in a Demonic tribunal if she was ever challenged on it. Marla quickly clocked out and went down to street level. As a demon, eating wasn't really necessary, but she had an admitted weakness for human food.

She went to a small ramen stall that mostly catered to students from the high school, and ordered a big bowl of steaming noodles and a carafe of sake. The proprietor raised an eyebrow at the odd foreigner ordering alcohol at noon, but filled her order anyway. She guzzled the soup greedily, smacking and slurping and chomping the whole way through. A few curious salarymen from nearby offices tried to engage her in conversation, but she pretended she didn't speak Japanese until they gave up their hopeful advances. She downed the entire carafe of sake, which gave her a pleasant, mild buzz that would keep her upbeat over the latter half of the day.

At 1300 prompt, she clocked back in, using the demonic interface of her phone. Her next mission was out in TokyoBay, on the fishing trawler Inabakumaru. Fortunately, the next three missions were all in the same place, and followed the same general theme of disabling the fishing vessel. Though it was also loaded with fish, the real prize was a time-sensitive scientific experiment that had to be delivered to the Port of Tokyo as soon as possible. Her job was to disable the ship's fuel and oil pumps, and then radio, leaving it temporarily stranded. It was currently steaming towards Tokyo at top speed. Naval engineering also wasn't Marla's forté, so she'd been given extra time to figure out how to actually accomplish the task.

She took a bus to the shorefront, and then sped off over the ocean when no one was looking. The ship was a good ten miles out, so she flew at top speed, following the icon on her phone's GPS. When she arrived, she was pleased to find the deck of the large vessel almost deserted; on a modern ship, no more than a skeleton crew was required on the bridge, and all of the fish workers were belowdecks, preparing the catch for sale. She brought up a blueprint for the Inabakumaru, and followed the schematic aft and down until she found the clearly labeled engine room.

"Well, that was easy," she said out loud, not tempting fate at all.

Actually disabling the equipment wasn't. The demon woman was surrounded by gears and pipes and things that were too hot even for her to safely touch. She accidentally brushed her hair against a dripping valve, and got a bunch of engine grease folded into her blonde locks for her trouble. The loud mechanical hum was sometimes interrupted by sudden bursts of steam from all around her, and Marla became increasingly claustrophobic as she typed in the engine's model number into a search engine and tried to see what all the parts did.

"I'm a demon, not an auto mechanic, Hild dammit," she muttered.

Nobody answered.

Finally, Marla decided to dispense with subtlety and lay into the engine with all of her Third Class powers. She threw a few fizzling fireballs into various parts of the engine, making it glow red and creak under the stress of the sudden temperature change. Inspired, she broke a nearby pipe full of cold water and directed the pressurized flow to the superheated engine. With a deafening crack, the metal gave way under the stress and the engine block itself cracked in two. Marla was satisfied that such a destructive event was enough to ruin both the fuel and oil pumps, each of which relied on the cooling properties of the respected fluids flowing through them to stay functional. Next was disabling the radio. That might be more tricky; someone was bound to be on the bridge trying to figure out what the Hell went wrong with the engine.

On the bridge, three men argued with one another angrily. They all turned to stare at the blonde haired stranger, covered in engine grease and sweat, who had mysteriously appeared aboard their ship as if by magic.

"Who the Hell are you?" the Captain finally asked in a rumbling voice.

Marla grasped inwardly for a plausible story. This time, even she couldn't come up with a believable lie. Well, when you couldn't appeal to a man's brain, there was always one other way to convince him. She hiked up her skirt and exposed her stained underwear.

"Why don't you meet me in the captain's cabin in five minutes?" she asked in her most seductive voice. "In fact, why not all three of you?"

They'd been at sea for two weeks, and all of their questions melted away and leaked out their ears. She laughed and pushed their groping hands away from her breasts and ass.

"I said give me five minutes! Look at me, I'm all greasy."

"Doesn't bother me none," a crewman with an Osaka accent announced.

"Well it bothers me! Five minutes, I promise."

They almost knocked her over in their eagerness to the captain's quarters. Marla laughed out loud; male stupidity was as predictable as it was exploitable.

A few moments later, she found and then smashed the radio. She hummed as she took off into the sky, trying to imagine how the captain of the Inabakumaru would explain himself to his bosses at corporate. His engine exploded, a strange blonde woman appeared on his ship, covered in grease… offered to fuck them and then destroyed the radio before vanishing into thin air? Who would possibly believe such an outlandish tale? They might never get a plausible story out of him, but one thing was sure; either way, that captain's career was over. Not to mention the ruined oceanography experiment vital to the health of Tokyo's fishing industry. Marla wiped a greasy hand on an equally greasy skirt and made another check on her day planner. She was going to have to go home and get a change of clothes after this.

When she got home, she took a quick shower in the bathroom she shared with her suitemate and scrubbed off as much grease and filth as she could manage with a few once-overs with a pumice stone. She dried just as quickly, and winced when she saw that she left little streaks of engine grease on her formerly fresh towel. She threw it in the laundry and checked her phone for her next mission. After all, picking the appropriate clothes was vital to success. The next objective was to call in a bomb threat to the University of Tokyo. Well, that couldn't be easier. She went to her outdated MacBook, connected to the global internet using a proxy server routed out of Hell specifically for the purposes of troublemaking, and did a Skype audio call to the University's admissions office. She dripped, wet and naked, into her desk chair.

"Hai, University of Tokyo's Admissions Office. How may I direct your call?" a polite female voice answered her.

Marla affected her gruffest and most threatening tone.

"I will get revenge for failing English! There is a bomb in a bookbag on the second floor. Good luck finding it."

"Wait, which building?" asked the frightened secretary.

But Marla had already hung up.

Another success, another tick on her day planner. The next mission, however, made her groan out loud.

"Damn it, Hild. I know you give these ones to me just to humiliate me."

There was no shortage of demons in Hell willing to play the kinkiest sexual games with the mortals; I mean duh, it is _Hell_ after all. Marla wasn't exactly a prude, but she considered herself a cool, calculating professional. If Hild wanted some Hussy, Third Class, there were scores willing to try to outdo one another in daring or perversion. Marla realized it was probably some kind of power play; just another way to keep her under Hild's thumb. Nevertheless, the arch-devil was just looking for an excuse to permanently revoke Marla's First Class license. She had to do it whether she liked it or not.

Marla went to her closet and considered her options. She had a svelte red dress that might do the trick, but it was still daylight, and she didn't want to give away the redness of her eyes. Most people were willing to mistake them for brown as long as she didn't push her luck. Her targets had to be young, so she needed an outfit that would catch the eye of younger men, and her Little Black Dress was a little too classy to fit well on the teenage body she'd have to affect. She finally settled on a pink baby doll tee, no bra, and a black miniskirt with metallic pink trim, no panties. A pair of pink and black striped socks that reached a few inches above her knees but no farther, and a pair of shiny black boots later, and she was almost ready to go. She checked her appearance in the small, yellowed mirror in her bathroom, and made a few quick touchups until she looked no more than sixteen rather than her usual, older appearance. Satisfied – or at least satisfied that she would succeed at her mission – she rode the elevator down to street level and waited at the nearby bus stop for the next bus.

Marla attracted more than a few stares from passing men and she shifted uncomfortably. Once again she cursed Hild for putting her in such a humiliating position. Her ears burned, and though the typical Japanese instinct for politeness quickly kicked in, it was impossible not to notice eyes drawn to the nubs of her nipples. In spite of herself, Marla found herself slowly getting hotter, and she shifted time and time again, trying to get rid of the feeling.

Finally the bus came, and she gratefully boarded it. Though she didn't realize it, the man behind her could see pretty much everything as she mounted the steps onto the vehicle. That wasn't the mission, though, and she scanned the interior of the bus until she found the perfect target. A group of school-aged boys were sitting towards the back, trading perverted jokes and irritating the families and grandmothers around them. She made her way to the empty seat next to the group, and took a deep breath and looked out of the bus window.

"Hey, look at that," she pretended not to hear one of them say. "She's hot."

"I'd like to fuck her," another said, making a motion with his hands that drew a collective guffaw from the group.

Well, it couldn't be helped. Marla shifted again and tried not to let her breaths grow short.

Pulling this off casually wasn't going to be easy, but Marla wasn't about to just lift her skirt and show the boys everything like some kind of stripper. She slowly, surreptitiously, moved her legs apart and started playing a game on her phone. She was conscious of their eyes probing her every move. They joked and chatted about other things, but every time she changed her position, the conversation grew silent for a moment before resuming. Something itched; she scratched her inner thigh. They were breathless with anticipation.

Finally, she made her move.

"Damn it!" she shouted, opening her legs to smack her thigh in mock frustration.

The level was easily retried, but it was as good excuse as any to commit a grand gesture in her seat. She breathed a sigh of relief as her inward sense of demonic intuition indicated that she'd been successful; for a fraction of a second, the boys had seen everything they'd ever hoped to see. Marla quickly got up and made her way to the bus doors, determined to get off at the next stop.

"Hey, what's your name?" one of the boys suddenly called out.

The bus pulled to a halt, and Marla quickly got off without answering.

The next mission was, "commit a felony." Marla wondered if she could also count the tragic death of Yamatsu Kaoru as a murder. She decided not to push her luck. She looked around the city streets, trying to find a good opportunity to commit a felony. Finally, she settled on arson – with her innate powers of flame, it would be all too easy to set something alight and disappear into the late afternoon crowds. Now, she needed a target, and an opportunity. To her dismay, Marla had gotten off the bus in one of Tokyo's seedier district. All around her were run-down bars and love hotels, and stores of exceedingly questionable repute.

It would never to do set any of _those_ on fire. After all, they were the loyal mortal minions of the legions of Hell.

She walked along the streets, ignoring the catcalls of the passersby and grateful that there was still some daylight left, preventing her from having to use her full powers on a wannabe sexual assailant. Finally, she found a good target. It was a small Christian church trying and failing to evangelize the people of the lost district away from their lives of sin. A man stood out front with a sign written in Japanese; "Jesus paid it all."

Marla snorted. These people had _no idea_.

As soon as Marla was within shouting distance, the street preacher pointed an accusatory finger at her and shouted, "Turn away from your life of whoredom and debauchery!"

Marla gave the man another once over, and didn't see the crucial thing she hoped he wasn't carrying.

She answered him softly. "I'm lost and I don't know what to do with my life. You wouldn't happen to have a … Bible I could look at, would you?"

"You are destined for the fires of Hell!" the man cried, flecking her with a little spittle. Then her words finally caught up with him. "Wait… what?"

"A Bible?"

"I…" he absolutely, positively did not stare at the breasts straining her tee shirt. "Wait here, I'll be right back! Japanese, German, Koine Greek, Latin, Amharic –"

The man sounded like he could go on all day, and Marla cut him off. "Japanese is fine, please."

The man went back inside his dilapidated storefront church. Marla cast a few glances around, and then threw a fireball directly into the dry wooden frame of the building. It caught immediately, and Marla casually joined the crowd of gawkers that quickly coagulated to watch the building burn. There were loud screams from inside the building, which soon turned into choked gasps before cutting off completely. When the fire department finally arrived to combat the blaze, Marla could safely tick two felonies off her day planner. She returned home by subway ignoring the lustful stares of fellow passengers, changed gratefully into something a little more professional, and then wrote her daily report, carefully leaving off the variety of curses she directed at Hild.

Finally, she was done with her work for the day. She clocked out, took another long shower, and then decided to drink her sorrows away at the bar. Marla donned her red dress, now that it was safely evening and people wouldn't be able to perceive the curious color of her eyes. She morphed back into her normal age affectation, which made her appear in her early to mid thirties. She did up her hair, put on a little makeup, and silently assured herself that she would get her First Class license back soon. She'd already spent more than her day's transportation budget, so to get to the nearest drinkery she had to simply walk.

She was on her third gin and tonic when she noticed a flamboyantly dressed figure at the bar. With a sudden flash of indignation, she realized it was the traitor Urd, sitting at _this_ bar and drinking, specifically to spite her. Flushed with liquid courage, Marla decided to confront the half-demon directly.

Urd looked up from her beer.

"Marla! What a…. well, what a _surprise_, anyway."

"Stuff your yap," Marla said, waving an accusatory finger. "Who do you think you are, walking out on Hell like that? I order you back, right this instant!"

A few drunks at the bar turned to watch this exceedingly curious exchange.

"I'm my own goddess. I had a choice and I made it. I don't need to follow your orders," Urd answered coolly.

Marla was too far in to back down now. "I challenge you to a duel!"

"A duel? Fine. Since I'm the one being challenged, I get to choose the weapon. And I choose… this." Urd hefted her glass of beer and waved it at Marla.

"A drinking contest?" Marla hesitated. Urd's stomach for liquor was legendary, even in Hell. But the gin interrupted before she could back down. "You're on!"

Urd ostentatiously guzzled the last of her beer. "Okay, _now_ I'm ready."

"Bartender!" Marla smacked the counter. "Two Sapporos!"

The man shrugged and poured them a pair of glasses. The two women looked one another in the eye, and then downed them in seconds.

"Two more, please," Urd said.

The bartender grunted. "You're going to have to pay as you go."

"Marla, give him your credit card. Here's mine, Sensei. Loser pays."

Marla obeyed with a groan. She had to win this one, or she'd never pay off the debt. Fortunately, even a demon could get a line of credit from Tsutaya. The two women chugged their second round, a little slower this time.

"Another!" Marla cried before Urd could take the imitative.

Round after round went down in a similar fashion. After the eighth round in as many minutes, Marla felt the room spinning around her. One more and she was holding onto the bar for dear life, afraid that the velocity of the room was going to fling her free of Earth's gravity and into a permanent orbit around the planet. But Urd, too, looked like she was starting to feel deleterious effects from the contest. She'd already been on her third beer when Marla originally challenged her, so they were on equally unsteady footing when it came to blood alcohol content.

"Fivh minute break?" Marla suggested.

"Five minutes," Urd gratefully agreed.

The two women went to the bathroom and carefully avoided talk to one another while they broke the seal. The sound of urine hissing against the porcelain of the squat toilets echoed in the bare bathroom. It was an uncomfortably intimate experience. In all, it took them nearly the full five minutes just to make it back to the bar.

"Would you ladies like another round?" the proprietor asked disapprovingly.

It was only 1750, and he didn't want to have to clean vomit off the bar.

"Hyes!"

So, the two women sipped and winced their way through still another round. Finally, Marla put her head in her arms and fell into a peaceful slumber without even sliding off her barstool.

"I won!" Urd mumbled triumphantly. "Hwun more floor the road, Sensei."

Urd drank the entire beer, and then pinched Marla's cheeks.

"Sheesh so cuteth when she sleepth, sheesh just hlike a little angel," Urd slurred just before joining her rival in alcohol-induced dreamland.

Marla awoke to the sound of a garbage truck beeping incessantly. She blinked her eyes open and tried to deduce where she was. Something stank of overripe fruit and urine. With a sudden flush of shame, she realized that her entire bottom half was covered in a suspicious wet spot. The fabric beneath her was smooth and the mattress was lumpy. Then she realized she wasn't sleeping on a mattress at all. She was in an alley, on a pile of garbage bags. The warm and soft something pressed against her right torso proved to be Urd. Marla noted, with the only satisfaction she was likely to receive all morning, that Urd had a similarly wet zone down between her legs.

"No honey, ten more minutes," Urd grumbled before rolling onto another garbage bag.

Marla shook her off and stood on unsteady feet. She was still drunk, and the world revolved sickeningly around her. She puked into a garbage can, wiped stray chunks of vomit off her face, and started the long walk of shame back to her tiny apartment. Her eyes ached mercilessly from falling asleep with her contacts still in, and she dragged them out of her eyes and threw them on the ground, willing to endure an hour of blurry vision. She tried to blink out the painful abrasions left behind on her eyeball. At least she still had her purse.

The two would never compare notes on the topic, but the bartender charged both of them for the full amount. Oh well. At least Marla was one day closer to getting her First Class license back.


End file.
